Authors Be Bold & Explore
Every authentic author has a distinctive voice
I met with my “book club” yesterday. Our membership spans from central and southern Africa to the west coast of North America. This “book club” meeting was organized by our publisher Jessica Powers.
We are authors. Still book club, right? Instead of plots, characters, and wine; it was marketing and engagement with readers.
As Catalyst press encouraged that we each consider ourselves Artisan Authors (ISBN: 9781965478651) by Johnny Truant .
Jessica stated, “I just want to read this entire book to you.” Which may have been ok, had she hosted the meeting with a more stable internet connection. A few members of the book club expressed concerns that once upon finding a market, that they would feel obliged, or stuck?, within a genre, setting, or suite of characters. One South African author stated she wanted to write next about cowboys which caused me to laugh. I turned away from the camera politely. How could I explain the humor I felt with her statements?
I’ll explain it to her and thus to MA Kelly. I had spent my Friday afternoon practicing reading Chapter 4 of “Captain Henry: 2½ Insurrections, 2 Wars, 1¼ Centuries + a Story of Love.” For all the world, it reads like a scene from a cowboy movies with steam trains, horses, and guns. On the surface, I tend to write about the experiences of soldiers, medics, firefighters. Frankly, I employ my words to tell stories of the internal legacy of being a public servant: PTSD, injuries, illnesses, separation from family/friends, fear, exhaustion, and community. I too had the thought how will “my” readers take this. Yup, the next chapter I record incorporates classic cowboy motifs.
Instead of announcing that I too put my foot on the stirrups, I recounted a YouTube video by Rick Beato
where in he challenges listeners to identify a guitar player from a single note. I’ll bet that readers can identify authors from a single sentence. We each have distinctive phrasing, tone, vocabulary, cadence, and timbre. While, I agree that readers invest in characters and their lives (come on Patrick Rothfuss, you got me hooked), it is the writing that I ultimately love. I re-read Ken Follet’s “Eye of the Needle”/“Storm Island” just as often as I re-read the Kingsbridge books. It’s Ken’s writing and storytelling that I love.
Within “Eye of the Needle”, Ken discussed how a telegrapher has a fist, the then slang term for the identifiable patterns a telegrapher has when sending messages. It is like hearing someone’s voice. In WWII intelligence, the Allies could not just replace a German spy with a Brit. They would be sussed out quickly. The Allies had to learn to keep that voice consistent.
The message to my fellow authors attending our international book club on Saturday 10JAN2026 is that when we write authentically, our fist, our voice sings through.
Why did I give over a third of a novel to cowboy motifs, because my ancestor Captain Henry was a buck private in 1872 patrolling the southern states and arresting insurrectionists, KKK members, and others who were violently and aggressively torturing, lynching, and disposing American citizens of their rights. It was at this moment following the Civil Rights Act of 1866, that southern politicians tired of having the U.S. Army patrolling communities then arresting people. These politicians said “enough,” and passed a law that prohibits the use of the United States military for domestic law enforcement. That law, “Posse Commitatus” is still the law and often mentioned in civil discourse.
The author is still me. My fist, my tone, my vocabulary, my timbre are in ever sentence I write.
As my publisher and Johnny B. Truant encourage readers and critics will find me regardless of setting.
How did I do on Beato’s quiz? Meh! I knew who to expect Jimi, Mark Knopfler, EC, Page, Peter Frampton. I missed David Gilmour which frustrated me because I listened to “The Wall” very loudly 2 weeks ago when a surgeon pulled 2 metal pins from my right wrist. One note is tough!
I.M. Aiken is the author of 2 novels and a growing pile of short stories.
“The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County”
“Stolen Mountain”
“Trowbridge Dispatch”, a series of short stories that can be found anywhere podcasts are found or on substack
Love this! My cowboy boyfriend lives out in the middle of the West Texas desert so the internet is not always stable... It seems as though you all had a scintillating discussion in my absence, however. So glad!